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A style guide, or style manual, is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field. The implementation of a style guide provides uniformity in style and formatting within a document and across multiple documents.
The ALWD Guide to Legal Citation is published as a spiral-bound book as well as an online version. It primarily competes with the Bluebook style, a system developed and still updated by law reviews students at Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia. Citations in the two formats are essentially identical. [1]
In articles with topics that cover multiple jurisdictions, such as multiple states or multiple countries, aim to provide a general overview for all jurisdictions. Within different legal systems, the law may have evolved in divergent ways. Because the law differs between jurisdictions, make clear what jurisdiction you are writing about.
By 2011, The Bluebook was "the main guide and source of authority" on legal references for the past 90 years. [25] It is recognized as the "gold standard" for legal references in the United States, even though it was originally designed only to help teach law students how to cite cases and other legal material. [26]
In legal writing, citation signals appear before the citation that is being introduced. For example: Formatting rules for legal citations are well-defined. See generally The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (Columbia L. Rev. Ass'n et al. eds., 21st ed. 2020) (describing formatting rules for legal citation and providing examples).
The drafting of legal documents such as contracts is different as, unlike in most other legal writing categories, it is common to use language and clauses that are derived from form books, legal opinions and other documents without attribution. Lawyers use forms documents when drafting documents such as contracts, wills, and judgments.